


disappear into the sun

by orphan_account



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series)
Genre: Claire Being Beautiful, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Making Perfect, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23192263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s insurgent. This feeling, crawling out of his belly and taking up residence in the hollow of his throat, liquid-warm and hovering right on the verge of being named.(He could name it if he was brave.)
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 16
Kudos: 86





	disappear into the sun

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT A FUCKIN' WEEK. 
> 
> i'm stressed, you're stressed, we're all stressed. i re-watched making perfect: thanksgiving edition today, and i was inspired so this was born. i hope it takes your mind off of things like it did for me.
> 
> remember rpf rules, and stay safe, everyone <3

Brad whines loudly about sumac and tries not to stare as Claire slips into her mother’s kitchen in a pair of shorts and a tank top, her hair up off the back of her neck, her slender feet bare. 

It’s insurgent. This  _ feeling, _ crawling out of his belly and taking up residence in the hollow of his throat, liquid-warm and hovering right on the verge of being named. 

(He could name it if he was brave.)

He’d almost kissed her in Denver. Standing in a poorly lit hallway outside of her hotel room, carrying her bags in his hands and the weight of a day’s worth of unadulterated smiles against his skin. Hovering like it was the end of the first date and not like they’d just spent hours at a county fair under the pounding sun, only to lose the competition they’d flown out there for. 

Claire’s head had been tipped back against the door, and her t-shirt was wrinkled, and her pale cheeks were sunburned, and it had taken all the control Brad had to step away. 

“We’re going clamming,” Claire says now. 

There’s something about being  _ here  _ with her that Brad almost can’t bear. She fits into this place with ease: this is Claire with none of the need to prove herself that she usually labors under, Claire without unending stress hanging over her head. This is Claire in her element, and Brad is so caught up in her that he can’t even look. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” says Brad, and doesn’t look up, and doesn’t look up, “Leavin’ me and Andy here to do the dirty work while you go have fun, huh? You think you’re sneaky, but I got your number, Saffitz.”

She laughs, and Brad makes the mistake. She laughs, and Brad is trained to answer that sound, he’s fuckin’ Pavlov’s dog or whatever, it only means one thing—their eyes meet across the kitchen island as people flood into the room, blue on brown, and the name of this thing is so close to the tip of Brad’s tongue that he can almost taste it. 

Claire shrugs. The movement of her shoulders catches his eye (he’s looked up and now he can’t go back) and his mouth is dry, his hands are frozen, still. All that milky-pale skin, shock-white under hot pink straps. She’s beautiful. She’s untouchable. 

“So come,” Claire says. There’s a cant to her lips that Brad barely recognizes: something bold and a little teasing, something that has him wanting to drop everything and follow wherever the hell she leads. “We’re already off schedule anyway.”

“Holy shit _ , _ ” says Brad. There’s ten feet between them, but he could close that distance in a single second if she gave him a sign. He meets the eyes of the rest of the people in the room, because if he keeps them on hers for too long, she’ll figure him out. “This ain’t the Claire I know. What’ve you all done with  _ my  _ Claire?”

The rest of the chefs are ignoring him, pretty much used to the Brad and Claire show at this point, and Brad supposes he’s grateful for that. He doesn’t want any of ‘em seeing this; seeing him slowly break down. 

“Fine, Leone,” says Claire—a flash of those even teeth, long eyelashes blinking a little too slow not to be deliberate—and shrugs again. She turns, looking back at him over a smooth shoulder. “Stay inside. See if I care.”

She’s the first one out the door. Brad watches until he can’t see her anymore. 

“Get it together man,” Andy says, staring at Brad like he’s embarrassed for him, which. Well. Fair. 

  
  
  


She ends up across the table and down a few seats by the time the food is finally on the table. He doesn’t pretend not to be disappointed by that. 

Claire makes easy conversation on her side, and Brad does the same on his. Matching her. Not speaking to each other, but meeting eyes in the pauses between words, brushing fingers when she passes him the pie dish. 

“We did well,” Carla says. They’ve all slowed down by now: a little more conversation, a little less enthusiastic shoveling of food into mouths. They’re sipping alcohol and rubbing full stomachs, chatting, content. 

Claire’s chin is in one hand, her wineglass in the other. Her gaze is heavy and liquid and round. 

It’s September, and everything around them has turned to gold. The weight of the sun is sticky on Brad’s neck. 

“Hell yeah we did,” Chris says. “This was glorious.”

Claire blinks once, slowly. Sunlight glinting off of her eyelashes. When she looks at Brad, she smiles at him, and his breath catches. 

His friends’ voices sort of fade into the background as he looks at her, and shit—he’s head-over-heels, he’s dizzy, he’s captivated, he’s a million other fucking cliches—but the way she smiles is so much a part of him that he can’t tell where he ends and she begins. Their threads are tied; he couldn’t untangle them even if he wanted to. 

And he doesn’t want to. 

(There’s a word for this feeling. It pulses beneath the surface of his skin).

Claire had been disappointed when they’d lost the competition—really, truly disappointed. Brad knows how much self-worth she finds in her culinary prowess, and he knows how fragile that is. Brad also knows what Claire Saffitz looks like as she teeters on the brink of a breakdown: the defeat in her eyes, the slump to her shoulders, the fragile set of her mouth, too tremulous by half. 

So he knew what he had to do. He knew how to rally her with a couple of loud jokes when the camera was running, and then a few soft words when it wasn’t. He knew to take her slim hand in one of his for just a second, to pull her into the midst of the fair, to buy her shitty, greasy food, and play games, and ride rides. 

She’d leaned into him all day. Instinctive. Like at his side was where she belonged. 

He can’t stop thinking about that. 

If he’d kissed her in that hallway, Brad doesn’t think she would have pulled away. 

“Better start cleaning all this up,” Claire says mildly, after a few golden-slow moments have passed, after she’s worked Brad’s heart rate up so high just by gazing at him that he can’t believe nobody else can hear it. “Before we all fall asleep out here…”

A bit of scattered laughter. The curve of Claire’s cheek is soft when she smiles. A little flushed, a little pink. 

The rest of them move to help her, and Brad does too: stacking as many dishes as he can in his big hands, preening a little when Claire laughs sweetly at him—because he’s Brad and she’s Claire, and he’ll never not crave her attention. She opens the door for him and he thanks her with a wink. 

They get the food packed away and plates scraped, and slowly but surely Claire and Sauci shoo everyone into the living room, telling them all to rest while they clean up. 

Brad lingers by the island. He can’t ever stand by when he thinks Claire might want his help with something. 

Claire sighs loudly—but it’s happy, Brad thinks. She’s got one of those soft, contemplative smiles on her face. “Big day,” she says quietly, turning the faucet on. 

Claire’s mom opens the dishwasher, ready to take dishes out of Claire’s hands and load it up. “I haven’t had so many people in my house since you all were kids,” she says. 

“Or this many dishes,” Claire says wryly. 

Brad comes up beside her at the sink. “Here,” he says. She turns toward him, the front of her apron wet from where she’s pressed up against the counter, and there’s barely any space between them. “Let me help.”

Her smile. “Don’t you wanna hang out with the others?”

Brad can feel Sauci’s eyes on him. “No,” he says. 

Sauci laughs loudly. 

There’s something about the way Claire’s face goes sunset-toned when he looks at her this closely that flips a switch in Brad’s gut, that makes him go warm all over. He likes the way she stares unwaveringly back up at him. He loves the way she bites her lip for just a second, just long enough to leave a line of pale-pressed indents in pink skin, vivid and seen. 

“You sure?” Claire says. Hands fiddling with her apron pockets. She’s barefoot still, and that makes their height difference even starker than usual, and Brad likes that, too. “Don’t wanna head in there and sleep some of it off?”

Brad always has about five hundred things on the tip of his tongue, but right now, it’s hard to drag any words up to the surface. He wants to set his hands on the places where her waist dips into a soft curve, and he doesn’t want to let go. 

He settles for motion: some combination of shrug and nod and grin that leaves him half a step closer to her and already reaching toward the sink. 

“Take my place, hon,” Sauci says to Claire. “And he’ll take yours, and I’ll go make sure nobody in there is spilling wine on my couches.”

“Good luck, Mrs. S,” Brad tells her. She dips out of the room, and maybe she smiles at him—he doesn’t know. He’s watching Claire. 

Claire, who has shifted so that she’s leaning back against the counter, her arms at her sides, her palms open and tender. 

He doesn’t know how to classify the expression on her face. 

He is forcibly reminded of a hundred other times they’ve stood like this—a thousand other times, years and years of times. He is forcibly reminded of every day that she’s stood before him with her chest open and her eyes wide and her smile soft and he’s been nothing but a fucking coward, frozen, inactive. 

“Our pie was a hit,” Claire says. There’s nervousness around the edges of her words. There’s something crackling in the space between them. 

Eye contact and pale skin and words traded over floured countertops. He should have kissed her in Denver. 

“Should’ve won, Claire,” he says. He’d step closer, but then there wouldn’t be any question as to what he’s doing, and—and he’s just hesitant enough. He’s just afraid enough. His heart feels locked up and battered. “It was—you are…” 

Words. God. He’s shit at those. 

But she smiles at him (she always smiles at him) and somewhere behind that smile there’s a laugh: one made of breath and all the times she’s touched him when nobody else is looking. And Claire settles a hand on her stomach, right above the spot where her apron ties criss-cross, and she looks at him long and deep, and she murmurs his name. 

He takes that step forward.

Toe-to-toe on a battered kitchen rug. They haven’t washed a single dish. 

One of his hands is in her hair, thumb sliding gently behind her ear, palm curled ‘round the base of her skull and the nape of her neck. Claire’s eyes flutter closed for a moment that’s too fast to count. 

Breathe in, breathe out. 

(Brad knows the word). 

“Claire,” he says. A name for a name. He’s the loudest fucking guy in the world, but right now he’s so quiet that he can barely hear himself. “Can I…”

“Uh huh,” she murmurs, and curls thin fingers around his wrist and pushes up onto her toes and brushes her lips over his—lighter than a whisper, lighter than a sigh. 

He’s so glad he didn’t kiss her in that shadowed hotel hallway. He’s so glad he can see her clearly. 

She settles back down onto her heels. Eyes still closed, hands still gripping. He sways forward, into her, around her; slips one arm around her waist and keeps his other hand where it is, fingers combing gently through the softness of her hair. 

“I like you a whole lot,” she murmurs. A smile breaks over her face. She tugs him forward until she can press her words into the patch of skin above his clavicle. “More than a coworker should.”

“Oh,” says Brad stupidly. 

Claire has her arms wound around his middle. Claire fits perfectly against him, all her edges lined up with his, all their curves fitted closely, and Jesus Christ, Brad’s never felt like this in his whole sorry life. 

“More than a friend,” Claire says quietly. 

He kisses the slope of her ear, because it’s there, and he can. The taste of his heart in his throat is burning. He wants to slip his fingertips beneath her neckline and under the hem of her skirt; doesn’t ever want to let go. “That’s good, Claire,” he says on a rasp. 

Claire pulls back a little, laughing that gentle laugh. “Brad…”

He meets her eyes in the little space between them. Someone’s left the window above the sink open; an evening breeze drifts in, lifts the ends of her hair with a careful gust. 

“I’m not any good with words, Claire,” he begins. His voice comes up out of that place right behind his ribs. The place that’s beating painful-quick. “You know that. I… but you.” A breath in, a breath out. “You gotta know I think you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

It isn’t everything. It isn’t even close. 

But she smiles when he says it, wide and bright and beautiful, and he thinks she might understand anyway. 

He ducks his head down and kisses her again, longer this time, deeper. Her mouth is soft and warm and wet and she’s real against him, every inch of her, and it doesn’t matter that they can hear the low hum of their friends in the other room, it doesn’t matter that it’s taken half a decade to get here. Brad’s kissing her, and she’s kissing him back.

(He’ll name this feeling when they're ready. Until then, they have this.)


End file.
